In case Spacebunny zaps me

Over at Vox Day, I posted this:

Good Will: 2/9/11 4:35 PM:
Therefore asking (good) questions (as you have) cannot be answered by any appeal to the Bible -- because those answers are not in the Bible!

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I've noticed something important: people who tell me that the answer isn't in the Bible haven't bothered to read it. Of course they are. Christianity is a self-complete system. While Christians have built up a near-Talmudic system of theological interpretation over 2000 years, we have also viciously used the Bible as a sword to prune it regularly. The most debated subject is the Trinity, and that debate is internal to the Bible: God is one, yet there are at least 4 entities (God the Father, the Angel of the Lord, the Spirit, and Jesus) in it who are identified as referred to as God. The answer is that there are 3 (the Angel of the Lord IS Jesus), and yet still one.

LDS teaching cannot complete our knowledge of the Lord God of Israel because it conflicts with the knowledge of God given in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek text. Smith and the LDS leadership were woefully ignorant of the Bible of their time, much less of the advances in textual analysis in the last 150+ years.

Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel, is not a created being. He was the Beginning and the End, the uncaused cause. The god of the LDS is a created being with a wife. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the only begotten Son, not simply one child out of billions (i.e. Mormonism scoops out the arian/socinian heresies, and then turns the blender all the way to 11). The dragon, the devil of old, HaSatan, is a created being, an angel who was cast out of his place from his rebellion, not Jesus' brother. God most certainly did not have intercourse with Mary, no matter what Brigham Young tought.

The serpent tempted Eve, telling her, "You shall be like God". The LDS tempts us likewise, telling us that we shall be our own Gods in our own creation. We won't be like God, we will be God!

If Moroni even existed, he followed in the fine tradition of Jibril: He was a false angel, a demon sent out to misinform anyone vulnerable. Arabia of the seventh century was an intellectual wasteland, filled with rampant paganism and ignorant, heretical pseudo Christians and Jews. When Mohammed finally came across Jews and Christians of strong, orthodox faith, they rejected him as the heretic he was.

Smith was equally placed. The 1830s were full of disbelief and wild near-heresies (the Seventh Day Adventists, Shakers, etc.). Smith, a "converted" fraud and huckster, collected people out of groups with poor Christian doctrine, but generally failed to turn the Scripturally strong.

Read the Apostle's Creed. Every line in it can be directly traced back as a paraphrase of Bible versus. LDS teaching directly conflicts with at least 3 of the traditional articles, and redefines at least 3 more to something entirely different than what the Bible says they will be.

Islam and Mormonism both fail because they claim to fix a broken system. At least Islam has the honesty to attempt to claim that Hebrew and Christian scriptures have been corrupted (a laughable claim in light of scriptural preservation, but at least it's a claim). Mormonism is stuck claiming that the Christian leaders were falsely interpreting the Bible we have, but then filled the LDS with claims that violate the black letter text of the Bible.

Now, back to the Mormon politician issue. If Mormonism is not Godly, then the Mormon has (knowingly or not) committed to fighting against God. God can still use that person, just as He used Cyrus or the Caesars, but that doesn't mean we should choose that person over a Christian. Will I take an "honest" Mormon over a dishonest Christian? No. Sorry.